Freedom and Heritage Society of Australia celebrates the multi-ethnic origins of the Australian people but rejects the ideology of multiculturalism.
Social harmony and national unity must be paramount goals of policy. Multiculturalism fragments our communities when it tells immigrants to “keep your culture and teach it to your children” without making very clear the expectation that any immigrant culture will merge within the entire community and support, rather than undermine, Australia’s national culture and traditions.
Where any inherent characteristics of a minority culture are incompatible with Australian law or likely to offend the standards of morality of the broad community, the interests of national unity and harmony require that these alien practices and values be suppressed and eradicated.
And where a minority culture classifies particular actions in the majority culture as offensive or immoral, it is essential that these immigrant attitudes be replaced by acceptance of the principle of free choice within the confines of the law and minimum standards of conduct.
As practised over the past five decades, multiculturalism has failed two essential requirements:
- it has not consulted the majority community, and
- it has not honoured the cultural heritage of Australia.
What are the key qualifications or conditions for being accepted for citizenship? Government policy regarding immigration and integration should insist that:
- all Australians should have an overriding and unifying commitment to Australia, to its interests and future first and foremost;
- all Australians should pledge fealty to and accept the basic structures and principles of Australian society – the Constitution and the rule of law, tolerance and equality, Parliamentary democracy, freedom of speech and religion, English as the national language and equality of the sexes; and
- members of minority cultures have obligations as well as rights. Their first obligation is to honour and support Australian sovereignty and to accept the standards of open discussion and debate on all matters social and cultural. The right to express one’s own culture and beliefs involves a reciprocal responsibility to accept the right of others to express their views and cultures.
Multiculturalism exacerbates unbridgeable cultural differences. Under the influence of multiculturalist ideology, authorities have failed spectacularly to publicly condemn ethnic crime and its community effects. The encouragement of minorities to retain individual cultural pursuits without integrating has reduced the community’s commitment to matters of national importance. Public rejection by some ethnic and religious groups of core Australian traditions such as Anzac Day is unacceptable.
Multiculturalism has ignored limits and tried to move the goalposts of acceptability in an already tolerant society. “Culturally sensitive policing” for some groups has subverted the rule of law by providing separate standards for some immigrant cultures– thus undermining a core component of Australia’s legal and constitutional values. This has damaged the personal security of citizens, national unity and national security.
Multiculturalism for minority groups mostly translates into financial grants to ethnic organizations. Its advocates have not provided basic programs to help new arrivals with problems of assimilation within the wider community.
Multiculturalism in Australia has generated expectations of perpetual hand-outs from governments. A whole industry of advisors, lobbyists and self-proclaimed community leaders has formed to seek access to the public feeding troughs for their ethnic constituencies. The wider Australian society is regarded merely as a source of funding and provisioning of auxiliary services pandering to privileged minorities.
Freedom and Heritage Society urges our federal, state and local governments to audit and cull all such funding policies and redirect public funding and support exclusively to community organizations which rally around a common cause for all Australians – not segregation by ethnicity or religion or means of arrival.
The moral relativism and cultural nihilism that comes with state-sponsored multiculturalism has been a cancer on every society where its advocates have gained advantage since the 1970s. In the United Kingdom, Germany, France and other European countries, multiculturalism has led to social disharmony and caused the emergence of ethnic and cultural ghettos both hostile and dangerous to the law-abiding majority. Permanent welfare parasitism has been allowed to develop, along with no-go “sensitive zones” where even the national police are afraid to venture. Multiculturalism has created the possibility even of civil war.
The bedrock components of Australia’s free, democratic and egalitarian society are our Judeo-Christian ethics, our British constitutional and legal system, and Western values of tolerance and human rights, especially free speech and expression. Ethnic and cultural minorities must never be allowed to reject or compromise these core components of the identity of the Australian nation. Examples of unacceptable standards are calls for legal pluralism – the rejection of the national law of Australia and its replacement by Sharia. Politicians and administrators at all levels need to advance everything that unites us, not facilitate and fund what drives us apart.
The first line of defence to protect our citizens from imported threats and cultural hostilities is the immigration selection criteria.